In a 219-212 vote, the House of Representatives passed on Friday a climate bill designed to decrease U.S. dependence on oil and create “green” jobs. It’s now up to the Senate to pass or veto the American Clean Energy and Security Act, which also proposes a cap-and-trade system to impose historic limits on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions.
The bill has been tweaked since it was approved in May by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, and it remains unclear how much progress the Senate will make on the bill. In it, U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases would be reduced 17 percent by 2020 from 2005 levels. That is less ambitious than the 20 percent initially sought, but slightly more aggressive than the approximately 15 percent Obama proposed. The legislation sets further pollution reduction goals — 42 percent by 2030 and 83 percent by 2050, with the latter just slightly higher than Obama suggested [Reuters]. The bill also speeds up the administration of $346 million in stimulus funds for the development and implementation of energy efficient technology.
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The state of Louisiana is losing its coastal wetlands to the Gulf of Mexico, and a new study suggests that conservationists won’t be able to turn the tide. If engineers don’t divert sediment-rich waters from the Mississippi River to help replenish a sinking river delta, about 10 percent of [the] state will slip beneath the waves by the end of this century. However, even if the engineers do try to abate the subsidence, the Mississippi doesn’t carry enough sediment to offset more than a small fraction of that loss, a new analysis suggests [Science News].
Before American settlers subdued the Mississippi and its tributaries, the river periodically overflowed its banks and spilled muddy water, thick with sediment, into surrounding wetlands. But the new study found that the Mississippi and Atchafalaya rivers today carry only half the sediment they did a century ago — between 400 million and 500 million tons a year then, compared with just 205 million tons today. The rest is now captured by more than 40,000 dams and reservoirs that have been built on rivers and streams that flow into the main channels [The Times-Picayune].
So even if Louisiana officials embark on an all-out campaign to restore the marshes through controlled levee breaks and diversion projects that bring back river water, it wouldn’t be enough to save the land–especially since sea levels are rising due to global warming. “We conclude that significant drowning is inevitable” [The Guardian], the study’s authors wrote.
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As the International Whaling Commission wound down this week with no progress made on the stalemate between pro-whaling and anti-whaling nations, some experts are beginning to question the commission’s central tool: the moratorium on commercial whaling established more than 20 years ago.Some experts wonder whether the ban is really protecting the world’s whale populations. Japan’s so-called “scientific whaling” program is a loophole in the ban, and the program is widely seen as a cover for commercial whaling. Japan catches more than 1,000 whales a year, and most cetacean researchers argue that whale populations exist at only a fraction of their former abundance and are far from large enough to sustain commercial harvesting for meat or oil — or even the culling of some 1,000 whales a year for science. Australia, a party to the IWC, campaigned this year to end any ”scientific whaling” that involves the deliberate killing of whales [Science News].
A report released by the commission on Monday also states that a quarter of the whales harvested from the Antarctic Ocean in the last seven months by Japanese researchers were pregnant. To many, the destruction of these whales and their unborn calves makes a mockery of the moratorium on whaling, given that the goal of the ban is to preserve whale populations. However, the Japanese Whaling Association contends on its Web site that “No whales have ever been hunted to extinction, nor are they likely to be. . . . [And] there are species which are abundant enough that marine management is needed,” such as for the Antarctic and northwestern Pacific minke whales and northwestern Pacific Bryde’s whales [Science News].
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The Department of Energy is handing out nearly $8 billion in loans today, and $465 million of the funds will go to Tesla Motors to produce its Model S electric sedan, the company’s first attempt at a mass-market car. The company already manufactures the Roadster, a high-performance electric sports car. Nissan and Ford Motor Company will receive the other loans; they’ll get $1.6 billion and $5.9 billion, respectively, to help produce fuel-efficient cars.
Nissan will use the funds updating a plant in Tennessee to produce the company’s upcoming electric sedan, and Ford’s loan will help expedite production of cars that go farther on less fuel. Tesla was perhaps the wild card in the funding equation because it is a small startup. The company has delivered slightly more than 500 Roadsters to customers, and the government loan will help pay for a Southern California manufacturing plant for the Model S sedan, due in 2011. A second plant in the Bay Area will make battery packs and electric drivetrains [The New York Times].
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Cleveland’s Cuyahoga River caught on fire 40 years ago June 22 when oily garbage floating in it was ignited, probably by sparks from a passing train. In turn, the fire sparked the creation of environmental agencies such as the Environmental Protection Agency, along with passage of 1972’s Clean Water Act. And the river, once a dumping ground for industrial waste and an icon for environmental disrepair, today supports more than 60 species of fish along with beavers and various bird species, and serves as an example of environmental restoration.
The river’s recovery is an inspirational account of how even the most putrid bodies of water could be cleaned up. Indeed, the first time [Cleveland resident] Gene Roberts fell into the Cuyahoga River, he worried he might die. The year was 1963, and the river was still an open sewer for industrial waste. Walking home, Mr. Roberts smelled so bad that his friends ran to stay upwind of him. Recently, Mr. Roberts returned to the river carrying his fly-fishing rod. In 20 minutes, he caught six smallmouth bass. “It’s a miracle,” said Mr. Roberts, 58. “The river has come back to life” [The New York Times].
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Curious how much carbon the atmosphere contains at this moment? Look no further than a giant “carbon counter” first switched on yesterday morning near New York City’s Pennsylvania Station. The 70-foot-tall screen, lit by digital low-energy LED, displays in real time the amount of greenhouse gases present in the atmosphere–and therefore gives some indication of how much trouble humanity is facing from global warming.
People outside of New York, don’t despair: The constantly scrolling numbers can be viewed at the project’s Web site as well. The numbers shown are based on measurements developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and include all the long-lasting greenhouse gases in the 1997 Kyoto Protocol, which was established at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate change [Bloomberg].
The clock, which is illuminated 24 hours a day, is also environmentally friendly. It uses low-risk carbon credits to offset its energy use, while illuminating digital numbers with 40,960 low-energy light-emitting diodes [Bloomberg]. The counter is a project Deutsche Asset Management, a branch of Deutsche Bank that invests in industries that mitigate or adapt to climate change.
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A new report from the federal government loudly makes the point that global warming is already happening, and not just in the remote reaches of Alaska. “This report stresses that climate change has immediate and local impacts,” said Jane Lubchenco, administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. “It literally affects people in their backyards” [Science News]. The report details the impacts to U.S. infrastructure like roads, sewage plants, and offshore oil drilling operations, and also takes note of the expected effects on sundry industries, from fishing in the northwest to maple sugar production in New England.
The report was prepared by the United States Global Change Research Program, which includes work from 13 federal agencies and the White House; the group is required to report once a decade on the state of the global environment. While the document contains little new science on global warming, experts say it’s a valuable synthesis of previous findings. “It’s not a document for scientists. It’s not even a document for policymakers,” said Katharine Hayhoe, a geosciences professor … and one of 28 report co-authors. “It’s a document for every individual citizen who wants to know why they should care about climate change” [Scientific American].
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A landowner in Indonesia may soon find it more profitable to sell carbon credits from untouched forest than to clear the land for agriculture, according to new research. As a case study, the researchers looked at 8.2 million acres that are slated to become plantations in Kalimantan, the Indonesian region of the island of Borneo. The researchers found that paying to conserve the forest was more valuable than plantations as long as poorer nations could earn between $10 and $33 for each tonne of CO2 saved. Currently a credit representing a tonne of CO2 sells for about $20 in the European Union, which has the world’s largest greenhouse gas trading system [The New York Times].
Since forests act like sponges for carbon dioxide, the principal greenhouse gas driving global warming, they can play a role in carbon credit markets that are used in international climate treaties. Industries that can’t cut their emissions enough pay landowners to leave their forests standing, so the trees can suck up carbon and offset the industrial emissions. What’s more, researchers say that such systems could also be a roundabout way to protect endangered species. The 800 proposed plantations that were studied contain 40 of the region’s 46 threatened mammals including orangutans and pygmy elephants [AP].
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The fishing boats that relentlessly sweep the northern Atlantic Ocean looking for cod may be changing the genetics of the species, researchers say, in a case of “fisheries-induced evolution.” Commercial fishing techniques used to harvest the valuable fish are wiping out the cod that swim at shallower depths, which have a genetic variant that’s not seen in cod that stick to deeper water. If overfishing of cod continues, the research team believes the genetic variant will be lost all together. “Man the hunter has become a mechanised techno-beast,” the team writes. “Modern fisheries are uncontrolled experiments in evolution” [New Scientist].
Evolutionary biologist Einar Árnason and his colleagues studied the changing population of the cod fishery around Iceland; it’s one of the largest in the world, yielding roughly 200,000 metric tons a year. The stocks are in far better shape than the collapsed fisheries in the western Atlantic [ScienceNOW Daily News]. In the new study, published in the journal PLoS ONE, the researchers examined how the genotypes of Icelandic cod have changed between 1994 and 2003.
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As global warming gradually melts away the sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, the oil and gas deposits buried in that inaccessible region are becoming a lot less theoretical to the five northern nations with claims to those riches. “For better or worse, limited exploration prospects in the rest of the world combined with technological advances make the Arctic increasingly attractive for development,” said Paul Berkman, … who specialises in the politics of the Arctic [The Guardian]. Now, a new study has estimated how much oil and gas may lie beneath the Arctic seabed, declaring that it contains about 30 percent of the planet’s undiscovered natural gas reserves and 13 percent of its undiscovered oil.
Researchers estimate that the Arctic holds about about 83 billion barrels of undiscovered oil, but say that’s not enough to challenge the dominance of the oil-rich Persian Gulf states. Meanwhile, the researchers say that the Arctic’s estimated 1,550 trillion cubic feet of natural gas is concentrated in marine territory claimed by Russia, ensuring that Russia will continue to be the world’s largest producer of gas. “These findings suggest that in the future the … pre-eminence of Russian strategic control of gas resources in particular is likely to be accentuated and extended,” said Donald L. Gautier, lead author of the study [AP].
Russia has not been shy about pressing its claim to the polar region: In 2007 two Russian civilian mini-submarines descended to the seabed to collect geological and water samples and drop a titanium canister containing the Russian flag [AP]. The other four northernmost nations — Canada, the United States, Norway, and Denmark (via Greenland) — have also sought some jurisdiction over parts of the Arctic.
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President Obama proposed new fuel efficiency standards today, establishing the first nationwide regulation for greenhouse gases [Washington Post]. The proposal is centered around the strictest plan ever for increasing fuel standards for passenger vehicles, sharply raising pressure on struggling automakers to make more efficient cars and trucks [Reuters]. Under the plan, cars would be required to reach an average efficiency of 35.5 miles per gallon (mpg) by 2016—four years earlier than the deadline imposed by the 2007 energy bill. Light trucks would be required to reach 30 mpg.
The new rules would pose a challenge for car manufacturers: the White House estimates the current average efficiency to be 25 mpg. The new standards would resolve the spat between California and auto manufacturers over implementing the state’s emissions regulations [ClimateWire]. In return for the strict national rules, California will drop its plans to impose strict state-wide standards for fuel efficiency, which had been bitterly resisted by both carmakers and President George Bush. In practice California’s rules tend to override milder national regulations, as it is cheaper to follow them than to produce different vehicles [The Economist].
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The Obama administration announced on Friday that it will keep a Bush-era rule that limits the steps that the government can take to protect polar bears. The rule prevents the Endangered Species Act from being used to curb greenhouse gas emissions, even though those emissions contribute to the shrinking of polar bear habitat by causing global warming and melting Arctic sea ice. The decision comes despite recent moves to undo former president Bush’s environmental legacy. It was announced on Friday by Interior Secretary Ken Salazar, who rejected special authority given to him by Congress and the pleas of Democratic lawmakers, environmentalists and scientists to overturn the regulation [Greenwire].
According to federal officials, the Endangered Species Act was written for a different kind of threat. In cases where an animal is threatened by logging, trapping or land development, it is used to identify—and punish—individual actions that harm them. That framework cannot be applied to climate change, they said, because the sources of that problem are global [San Francisco Chronicle]. Salazar said that the polar bear will still be listed as “threatened,” but instead of protecting it through the Endangered Species Act, the administration would push for legislation to limit U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. A “comprehensive global change strategy” is needed, he said.
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The fast growing plant switchgrass has been heralded as the next generation of biofuel stock: Unlike fertilizer-dependent corn, researchers say it’s highly efficient to grow the grass and process it into ethanol. But a new study suggests that there’s an even better use for switchgrass and other plants. Rather than turning them into ethanol to fill the gas tanks of cars, plants should be burned in power plants to generate “bioelectricity,” which can power electric cars.
Using a sophisticated computer analysis, researchers found that a small sport utility vehicle could do 9,000 highway miles (14,484 km) on the energy produced from an acre of switchgrass converted into ethanol. But converting that biomass into electricity allowed a battery-powered SUV to get 14,000 miles (22,531 km) on the highway…. “One of the driving factors that lead to this result is that the electric motor is much more efficient than the internal combustion engine,” said the lead author of the study, Elliott Campbell [Reuters].
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The Obama administration is once again working to reverse the path of former president Bush in another series of environmental policy changes, with two moves in particular looking to some like a crackdown on the coal industry. The Justice Department announced this week that it will challenge Bush’s mountaintop coal mining rules, the EPA has withdrawn a permit for a coal power plant scheduled to be built on Navajo land, and the Interior Department has strengthened endangered species rules.
On Monday, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar asked a federal court to abandon a rule approved during the final days of the Bush administration that allows coal mining companies to dump their waste near waterways. Prior to the change, regulations in place since 1983 have barred mining companies from dumping waste within 100 feet of streams if the disposal would diminish water quality or quantity [AP]. However, the Interior Department’s move didn’t go far enough for some environmentalists, who oppose this method of coal mining in general, regardless of the proximity of waste dumping to streams. In mountaintop removal operations, miners blast away large areas of a mountain in order to expose the buried coal seams. A spokeswoman for environmental law firm Earthjustice notes that Salazar’s move won’t halt the practice of mining itself, and says that reverting to the status quo is not enough because it won’t prevent coal companies from filling valleys with mine waste. “That’s not helping the communities concerned with mountaintop removal” [AP].
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The U.S. Interior Department announced new rules today that will allow the first offshore wind turbines to go up along the Atlantic Coast, including the site near Cape Cod that the Kennedy family famously opposed. In an Earth Day speech from Iowa, President Obama announced the new rules, which will set long-awaited guidelines for offshore leases, easements and royalty payments that the Bush administration worked on for years but did not complete [Los Angeles Times]. His administration will soon be able to begin leasing tracts off U.S. shores for electricity generation projects using wind and ocean currents [Bloomberg].
The Interior Department recently estimated that offshore wind turbines could someday supply more than enough electricity to meet the nation’s current demand [Los Angeles Times], an encouraging finding for Obama, who has been delaying the Bush-planned expansion of offshore oil drilling since entering office. The new plan is attractive because offshore winds are stronger and more reliable, and because the turbines would be closer geographically to large population centers—a key advantage since transporting wind-produced energy is still an obstacle to its large-scale development.
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